shadowm - Personalhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/
A light in the darkness.enSerendipity 1.7.8 - http://www.s9y.org/shadowm moving hostshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/292-shadowm-moving-hosts.html
PersonalSite updateshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/292-shadowm-moving-hosts.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2920http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=292nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>It’s almost as if <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/283-Wesnoth.org-moving-hosts.html">moving Web hosts in October</a> is going to become a yearly activity, like New Year celebrations, or birthdays.</p>
<p><code>shadowm.rewound.net</code> has been graciously hosted by an acquaintance of mine since 2005, even after I moved on to <a href="http://www.wesnoth.org/">weirder endeavors on the Internet</a>. Originally, there wasn’t much in terms of content here, because I only used the space to host a few files from tiny projects I was involved with. However, as I took an interest in dabbling with front-facing Web technologies like HTML, CSS, and to a lesser extent, Javascript, <code>shadowm.rewound.net</code> turned into a testing ground for crazy experiments ranging from a seldom-updating blog, to a quotes database for an IRC channel. Giving the few interested visitors a general idea of who I am and what I do in my spare time was barely a goal at first. Fast-forward to Q4 2014 and just look at this mess.</p>
<p>But as everyone knows, nothing is eternal. Not even the sun. Okay, from a practical standpoint we can assume the sun is eternal. <em>That’s beside the point.</em></p>
<p>The first chapter of “<b>shadowm</b>”— formerly known as “<b>Shadowmaster’s Lair</b>” — lasted much longer than it logically should have, and I thank grafix for that. Starting today, I am now hosted by <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&amp;u=108302">AI0867</a>, a close collaborator of mine in projects like <a href="http://wesnoth-umc-dev.ai0867.net/">Wesnoth-UMC-Dev</a>, my campaign <cite>Invasion from the Unknown</cite>, and, well, Wesnoth itself. Hence the new hostname, <code>shadowm.ai0867.net</code>.</p>
<p>Around May this year, I went to great lengths with the <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-Iris.html">Iris site redesign</a> to ensure everything would work on any host provided the software dependencies are satisfied, and removed and/or optimized a load of cruft left from earlier iterations. In theory, things should perform more or less fine on the new host, although it is hard for me to gauge this as a user — for you see, I am stranded in high-latency mobile broadband land, making pretty much every website out there equally slow from my point of view. In any case, <em>if</em> there are any glaring inefficiencies, I’ll do my best to correct them over the course of the next few days.</p>
<p>To sum it up, most people (i.e. the handful of followers I have) should <b>not</b> notice a difference besides the new hostname in URLs. Old links will continue to work for approximately a year through the magic of HTTP redirection, though you should probably update them now just in case.</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.</p>
Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:34:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/292-guid.htmlIrishttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-Iris.html
PersonalSite updatesSoftwareWeb designhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-Iris.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2901http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=290nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Those who have followed me these last five years or so are probably aware that I designed and coded this site’s layout on my own in an effort to learn the basics of Web design. Thus, <code>shadowm.rewound.net</code> has been redesigned no less than <strong>eight times</strong> since its inception.</p>
<figure class="thumbnail noframe fl">
<a href="//dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21371130/web/screenshots/blog/iris/dorset6d24-20140501.png" title="Dorset6"><img alt="" src="//dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21371130/web/screenshots/blog/iris/dorset6d24-20140501-thumb-200.jpg" /></a>
</figure>
<p><b>Dorset6</b>, the last iteration prior to this day, was first deployed on <b>May 11th, 2011</b>. Since then, it has only received minor incremental updates addressing bugs and minor practical concerns that cropped up later, since I found the overall design to be pleasing to the eyes — at least until I got a new screen where the <b style="color:#48f">lighter blue</b> colors turn out to be <b style="color:#b8f">purpler</b> than intended, oops!</p>
<p>The last maintenance update to Dorset6 was <b>Delta 24</b>, deployed on <b>April 26 2014</b>.</p>
<p>The underlying template engine, <b>Poison Ivy</b>, has not seen any architectural changes all these years since it was first deployed in <b>2010</b>. In the meantime, however, I have learned more about <abbr title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> design from my experience with various other projects. It can be very disheartening to look back on past practices and realize you were doing things completely wrong in <em>production software</em>!</p>
<p>During this time I have also heard all the hype surrounding <b>HTML5</b> and <b>CSS3</b>, and got to experience the results firsthand as large websites started making use of the new technologies. On top of that, support for Internet Explorer 6 is finally dying off, and Windows XP just reached its definitive end of life last month; software and Web developers everywhere rejoice as they no longer have to give support to grossly obsolete products from the early 2000s.</p>
<p>I have actually made use of CSS3 and forward features in <code>shadowm.rewound.net</code> since Dorset6, but right after deployment I decided to aim for leveraging more of their potential in the next iteration, <b>Dorset 7</b>. I promptly begun throwing around style and layout ideas. However...</p>
<br /><a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-Iris.html#extended">Continue reading "Iris"</a>
Sat, 17 May 2014 20:41:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-guid.htmlThe evolution of shadowmhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/282-The-evolution-of-shadowm.html
MiscellaneousPersonalhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/282-The-evolution-of-shadowm.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2824http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=282nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Because the <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/">Wesnoth.org forums</a> people keep addressing me as ‘shadowmaster’ or variations thereof:</p>
<ol>
<li>2006: Started using shadowm as my username on my own Linux installs (the ‘m’ meant absolutely nothing)</li>
<li>2006: Registered Shadow Master in the Wesnoth forums</li>
<li>2007: “Shadow Master” became the name of the final boss in classic IftU; meanwhile, registered shadowmaster on gna.org to be able to submit patches and commit to the Wesnoth SVN repository</li>
<li>2009: Renamed forum account to Shadow_Master to be able to use it with the MP servers forum authentication system</li>
<li>201?: Renamed forum account to shadowmaster as it is easier to type, closer to the original, and my gna.org username</li>
<li>2013: Renamed forum account to shadowm</li>
<li>2014: Rebranded website and blog as simply “shadowm” (previously “Shadowmaster’s Lair” and “Shadowmaster’s Blog”) as part of the <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/290-Iris.html">Iris</a> design deployment</li>
</ol>
<p>And that’s it. The ‘m’ no longer means anything, so the username has essentially come full circle.</p>
<p>(All names in this post are case-sensitive.)</p>
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:39:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/282-guid.htmlThe future of Invasion from the Unknown (and After the Storm, sort of)http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/276-The-future-of-Invasion-from-the-Unknown-and-After-the-Storm,-sort-of.html
After the StormInvasion from the UnknownPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/276-The-future-of-Invasion-from-the-Unknown-and-After-the-Storm,-sort-of.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2767http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=276nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Well, the cat’s out of the bag already. Not that I really intended to keep the plan under wraps for very long in the first place—perhaps I should have done that—but I already <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=555345#p555345">implied</a>, and then <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=557849#p557849">confirmed</a> that this is a thing that is taking place.</p>
<p><strong><cite>Invasion from the Unknown</cite> is being rewritten.</strong></p>
<p>Those who have stuck around for long enough may know that IftU’s prose has been revised before by ESR (up to scenario 6 or maybe 9, my memory’s hazy on this one) and later by SouthernOracle (entire campaign). None of these efforts went deeper than the language layer, and even then there is still a lot left to be desired in that department. I have also repeatedly redesigned and rewritten scenario 4 (“Over the Sands”) from scratch over the years.</p>
<p>During the production of <cite>After the Storm</cite> I realized and learned many things about my past and current work. A sizable amount of AtS’ development consisted of deciding exactly <em>how much</em> of IftU works and how much does not, either in execution or essence. Even after I gave up on perfectionism for AtS, I could not help but think that making such an absurdly ambitious sequel to such a very, very poorly done campaign was an absolutely preposterous waste of time. And I still think that is the case, and there is nothing I can really do to remedy the situation for people who have already played IftU and who will always remember it as the chaotic mess of half-baked ideas and shallow characters it currently is.</p>
<p>But I believe I can do better for future players.</p>
<p>The thought of ‘remaking’ IftU had been in my mind for years, but I always knew I would never find the right person with the interest in taking up such a colossal and largely unrewarding task while ensuring the end result would be just as I envisioned it. But… I also thought I would never see <cite>After the Storm</cite> complete with its two planned episodes and the—originally intended to be a separate sequel—final episode wrapping it up for good. AtS’ completion—regardless of how bad or good the results are—gives me a certain confidence that I am able to see a project through, even if that may involve <s>a few</s> a lot of unexpected turns along the way.</p>
<p>While the few people who actually like the ‘classic’ IftU might be inclined to assume the campaign’s overall tone will change for the worse (AtSification, anyone?), I don’t intend that to be the case and that would actually break AtS itself as the experiment in style it is intended to be. I do intend to add some of the characterization that is entirely missing in the current product, but not to the point of boring anyone to death with it — well, anyone who would play <cite>Excruciatingly Frequent and Extensive Walls of Text: The Campaign</cite> anyway. At the same time, some backstory elements and plot will be revised to allow some things to make more sense than they do at the moment. Scenario 4 will be rewritten from scratch once again in an effort to make it less tedious and more coherent. One or two scenarios may be axed in order to help with balancing and pacing issues currently resulting from the campaign’s length. <s>Mal Keshar will be replaced with a talking animal and Anlindë will be spared from scenario 13!</s></p>
<p>At the same time, the terrible codebase is being replaced with some more polished WML and Lua from AtS, and rewritten to take advantage of features that have only appeared in Wesnoth 1.9.x and 1.11.x — bear in mind that IftU was written in 2007 (Wesnoth 1.3.x) and most code has only been ported to <em>run</em> on newer versions within restrictive time constraints, without much regard for style or robustness.</p>
<p>All in all, I believe that this will allow me to keep some ideas fresh in my mind while continuing to exercise some skills for the benefit of both IftU and AtS. How long is this going to take? Less than AtS, <s>certainly</s> <em>hopefully</em>, but far more than it took me to complete IftU in the first place. My workflow requires me to go through the scenario sequence in an orderly, linear fashion, and I am only at scenario 7 after commencing this endeavor only about two months ago; and of course, my time is constrained by some sprite artwork that needs to be done or redone for <em>both</em> campaigns.</p>
<p class="center">&#8258;</p>
<p>Now, the question nobody asked and nobody with a fully-functional brain should ever care about: <strong>How is this affecting the development of a sequel to <cite>After the Storm</cite>?</strong></p>
<p>Simply put, it isn’t.</p>
<p>To be more specific, I do not intend to start working on a sequel to AtS right away given the poor/nil reception it has had as of this writing. And even if it were my intention to work on it in the immediate future, there would be <em>tons</em> of work to be done for it that currently fall far beyond my skills in terms of game design and artwork. I really want to avoid repeating the same mistake I did with AtS and tie this sequel to a previous iteration of limited scope and impact. Instead, I want it to be able to stand on its own and attract people who have never/will never play IftU or AtS; and I have a few ideas to achieve that, but nothing concrete or <em>affordable</em> as of yet. Will it ever see the light of day? Only time will tell.</p>
Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:33:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/276-guid.htmlAfter the Storm 0.9.0http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/268-After-the-Storm-0.9.0.html
After the StormHardwareInvasion from the UnknownMiscellaneousPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothWesnoth-UMC-Devhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/268-After-the-Storm-0.9.0.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2682http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=268nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>After years and years of development, drama, script rewrites, field research, technological advancements, <s>budget cuts</s>, and <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/6-Time-Traveler.html">temporal shenanigans</a>, today, <strong>March 5th 2013</strong>, I can say for sure that <cite>After the Storm</cite> is <strong>complete</strong> with the release of the most important milestone yet: <strong>version 0.9.0</strong>, with all three episodes completed with 13 scenarios each.</p>
<p>A few caveats for people upgrading from the previous release:</p>
<ul>
<li>This release adds the final Epilogue scenario for Episode III, which will become a bonus feature in 0.9.1. If you had previously finished AtS Episode III using versions 0.8.90 or 0.8.90.1, you will have a start-of-scenario save for the Epilogue scenario which you can use after upgrading to this version.</li>
<li>As usual, for the most stable experience I advise using <b>Wesnoth 1.10.x</b> — preferably <b>1.10.5</b> or a newer version when it becomes available. All episodes of this campaign were primarily developed and tested on 1.10.x, and there are subtle behavioral differences in the game engine between 1.10.x and 1.11.x that may break some sequences or cause other unintended side-effects.</li>
<li>Various issues reported by playtesters on <b>Wesnoth 1.11.1</b> were fixed. Most notably, it implements a workaround measure for mainline bug <a href="https://gna.org/bugs/?20373">#20373</a>, which is relevant for Episode III scenarios starting from <cite>Dark Sea</cite>. People who experienced player information loss (recall and recruit lists, gold reserves) after <cite>Dark Sea</cite> on 1.11.1 will need to replay that scenario from the start-of-scenario save (<strong>NOT</strong> the Turn 1 save!) in order for Wesnoth to install the code in charge of solving that issue in later scenarios. This code will <strong>not</strong> work on Wesnoth 1.11.2 — you will need to finish Episode III on 1.11.1 before switching to 1.11.2 (whenever it is released, anyway).</li>
</ul>
<p>This... has been a really long journey, to say the least, and I pretty much lost all hope of ever finishing this campaign at various points over past years. Development started in 2008 and quickly stagnated for various reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>Perceived lack/loss of interest from the audience</li>
<li>Excessive perfectionism on my part</li>
<li>Various <abbr title="In Real Life">IRL</abbr> struggles, including health and personal matters</li>
<li>Constant conflicts of interest amongst the few people who were actually interested in IftU and AtS’ development</li>
<li>Mainline development tasks taking up my spare time</li>
<li>Wesnoth.org forums moderation and administration taking up my spare time</li>
</ul>
<p>To say that I was overjoyed when the <b>Big Merge</b> <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/262-After-the-Storm-Big-Merge-done,-0.8.90-on-the-horizon.html">took place</a> just a couple of weeks ago would be a <em>big</em> understatement. This campaign became for me more than just another Wesnoth campaign as time passed — it became a part of me I thought I had left behind when IftU was first completed, a testament to my chronic failure to drive my own projects to completion.</p>
<h3>Development Hell</h3>
<p><cite>After the Storm</cite> changed a lot since it was originally conceived in 2008. The original draft was both over-pretentious and subpar, and it was not what I wanted to create after IftU. I wanted to create something <em>better</em> than IftU, but I locked myself in a trap by relying on source material that was already broken by design. Making a <em>better</em> sequel became my obsession, and that obsession led to AtS’ stagnation during the development of Episode I.</p>
<p>But some time mid-2011, I finally saw that trying to achieve perfection was a <strong>flawed</strong> goal in its own right. What I should have been aiming for all along was to make something fun, something from which I could learn, something I would enjoy to play and create. It was that realization that finally led me to complete Episode I, and the rest was a blaze; a blaze that culminates with this release, today.</p>
<h3>The result</h3>
<p>The final product is neither perfect nor it aims to be such. I do not think this campaign is for everyone, seeing as how the gameplay and plot are very tightly knit together, and the overall scenario count goes up to 39 without taking cutscenes, segmented scenarios, and bifurcation into account; however, unlike IftU, every episode is a separate campaign in its own right, and I believe that makes the overall experience more enjoyable and less chaotic, balancing-wise.</p>
<p>When I first wrote IftU, my grasp of the English language was as poor as my handle of storytelling in general was, to say the least. This also applies to AtS Episode I up to scenario 9, part 2 — which became the turning point for the campaign’s development when I finally chose to renounce perfectionism and embrace the <em>fun</em> in creation. But I digress. AtS’ prose is all my own output with minor amendments from my playtesters and proofreaders, and an experiment in style wherein I take breaks from mainline conventions <em>on purpose</em>, in a subtle and calculated manner. Attentive players may be able to point out those inflection points from just paying attention at the characters and their interactions — characters whose flaws and mistakes are not as detached from reality as the game’s fantasy setting or the subtext-based delivery may suggest.</p>
<p>The three-episodes structure was mostly an afterthought. AtS episode III became an amalgamation of a previous planned AtS sequel <strong>and</strong> an aborted IftU prequel. But this structure fits the narrative better than the original plan. Episode I establishes the setting and motivations for the protagonists, and provides more hints about the overarching plot than IftU did; Episode II gradually develops further on the characters’ inner struggles while providing entertaining gameplay and dropping even more hints about the grand scheme; and finally, on Episode III things go off the rails in pretty much every way possible—including gameplay—and the plot reaches its final resolution within the scope originally intended for AtS.</p>
<h3>Reception and expectations</h3>
<p>Some people will be unable to find or interpret the hints and may see the finale as an out-of-the-blue succession of events, all because I avoided indulging in long and heavy exposition sequences that leave nothing to the player’s imagination and reading skills. I am perfectly aware that this is an inevitability, <em>because it is absolutely impossible to please everyone</em>, as I have learned from my experience with activities otherwise wholly orthogonal to the storytelling field. I think some UMC authors should really keep this in mind whenever they feel tempted to abandon their efforts just because a vocal segment of their players doesn’t like their output.</p>
<p>Other people will not like AtS because “it’s not like IftU”. Perfectionism aside, it is impossible for it to be like IftU after all that I have learned in the meantime about storytelling, life, people, and myself. The circumstances under which IftU was created were entirely unique and I would have to trade many things which I have gained or lost since then in order to create another IftU — and I would not be pleased by the result in the end.</p>
<p>I think AtS works just fine as an IftU sequel, and a sequel does not have to fully embrace the spirit of the original to be such. It’s not like AtS isn’t littered with callbacks to IftU in direct and meta levels anyway. There are a lot of things in it to enjoy, and a lot of things to hate — and both are part of the plan!</p>
<p>But in the end, all that matters to me is that <strong>I like the finished product, had fun making it, and learned lots of things along the road</strong>.</p>
<h3>What’s next?</h3>
<p>For those who might think that AtS’ finale is a definitive conclusion to the involved characters’ respective arcs: <strong>no, it is not</strong> — but I allotted a specific amount of time and scenarios for telling their origin stories, and the campaign had to end at some point. Is there enough material for sequels? Hell, yes, but I don’t see myself making another Wesnoth campaign given all the technical and non-technical limitations imposed by the platform. The three ultimate protagonists have a whole journey ahead of them (as well as more characters to meet), and I would like to explore that in some other medium in the future. For fellow Wesnoth UMC authors, though, there is plenty of material left to work with if you pay attention to <em>every single minor detail</em>.</p>
<p>Of course, I am open to questions about everything you may want to know about the campaign, be it via forum PM, or posts in <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&amp;t=32091">the campaign’s development topic</a>. But I would appreciate it if people didn’t post topics for every single thing in Writers’ Forum — when that happens, odds are I will just ignore those topics in their entirety and not take the effort seriously. As a matter of principle, if you want to ask a campaign author about their work, you ask them directly through their official communication channels instead of walking to the closest park holding a massive sign in your hand.</p>
<p>With AtS 0.9.0 released, all I have left to do is to take care of fine-tuning scenario and unit balance, fixing any remaining prose issues (especially those annoying unit type descriptions for the in-game help system), dealing with missing/placeholder/subpar pixel art, and <em>somehow</em> find a portrait artist willing to work under my specific terms. The latter part will probably take ages, so don’t hold your breath waiting for AtS 1.0.0.</p>
<h3>Finally...</h3>
<p>I will be forever grateful to the people (and pets) who helped me along this arduous and extended quest, even those who did so unwittingly — if you are reading this, odds are that you know who you are.</p>
<p>To conclude this post, the changelog for this version follows:</p>
<pre>Version 0.9.0:
--------------
* General:
* Milestone: all scenarios completed.
* Scenarios:
* Deployed code to work around a side-switching issue affecting Wesnoth
1.11.1 during post-Divergence (E3S6) scenarios. The corresponding
mainline bug is #20373 and it is fixed on 1.11.2.
* Fixed various "wesnoth.get_side is deprecated, use wesnoth.sides instead"
warnings on 1.11.x.
* Minor story text grammar, style, and punctuation amendments.
* E1S6 - Quenoth Isle (Elves of a Different Land):
* Minor prose tweaks.
* E1S7 - The Search for the Past:
* Minor prose tweaks.
* E1S12 - The Queen:
* Minor prose tweak.
* E1S13 - Death and Rebirth:
* Fixed minor prose issue ("take risky choices" -> "make risky choices").
* E2S2 - The Heart Forest:
* Minor prose tweak.
* E2S11 - A Final Confrontation:
* Minor cutscene improvements near the end.
* E2S12 - Fate:
* Minor cutscene improvements.
* E3S8C - Breakdown:
* Don't allow summoning Fire Guardians until the player enters the
underground river passage.
* Fix objectives display inconsistencies throughout the scenario.
* Minor cutscene improvements.
* E3S8D - Destiny, part 2:
* Fixed Anya's movements not being undoable.
* E3S9: Dark Depths:
* Fixed minor cutscene glitches.
* E3S10 - Blood:
* Add a context menu item displaying a list of available attack
combinations and their effects.
* E3S13 - Epilogue:
* New scenario.
* Units:
* Balancing:
* Decreased Demon Slashing Gale's melee attack from 11-3 to 10-3.
* Decreased Demon Slashing Gale's ranged attack from 10-5 to 9-4.
* Fixed Chaos Arbalestier ranged attack animation failing to trigger.
* Fixed Shaxthal Turret not getting the biomechanical trait.
* Fix multiple "Descriptions should no longer include the name as the first
line" warnings on 1.11.1 and later.
* Fix unit types with missing faction prefixes in their names:
* Arbalestier -> Chaos Arbalestier
* Cataphract -> Chaos Cataphract
* Crossbowman -> Chaos Crossbowman
* Heavy Longbowman -> Chaos Heavy Longbowman
* Hide private variations for regular unit types from the help system on
1.11.x.
* Killed Kri'tan.
</pre>
<p>The full changelog—for versions 0.3.0 through 0.9.0—can be found <a href="http://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/wesnoth-umc-dev/tags/trunk/After_the_Storm/0.9.0/changelog?view=markup">here</a>.</p>
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:16:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/268-guid.htmlAfter the Storm 0.8.90 (a.k.a. “0.9.0 minus one”)http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/264-After-the-Storm-0.8.90-a.k.a.-0.9.0-minus-one.html
After the StormPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/264-After-the-Storm-0.8.90-a.k.a.-0.9.0-minus-one.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2640http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=264nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p><strong>Version 0.8.90 (a.k.a. “0.9.0 minus one”) is out!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Episode III (<cite>Final</cite>) is now complete in this version</strong>, sans the final Epilogue scenario (which will eventually become a bonus feature) that is not part of the scenario count for various reasons that will become evident once 0.9.0 is released.</p>
<p>Some important caveats:</p>
<ul>
<li>All scenarios after E3S6 (<cite>Divergence</cite>) were developed and tested on Wesnoth 1.10.x only, so if you are playing on 1.11.1 and you experience any issues, <strong>please report them on the <a href="http://r.wesnoth.org/t32091">forum topic</a></strong>.</li>
<li>Some code in later scenarios seems to be somewhat CPU intensive, performing significantly worse on my dual-core 2.1 GHz laptop than on my quad-core + HT 3.4 GHz desktop.</li>
<li>If you will play the last scenarios of Episode III with music, you <strong>must</strong> make sure you have upgraded the AtS Music add-on to version <b>0.2.0</b> first! This version was published on the add-ons server in advance a few days ago to give people time to upgrade in preparation for version 0.8.90 of the campaign proper.</li>
<li>Official support for Wesnoth versions 1.9.10 through 1.9.14 has been dropped in this version. In theory, Wesnoth 1.9.14 should work just fine, but there are several minor bugs that were addressed later during the 1.10.x stable series that may affect this campaign.</li>
</ul>
<p>Special thanks go to <a href="http://forums.wesnoth.org/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&amp;un=vultraz">vultraz</a> for playtesting this beast starting from E3S6 in less than a day (around 14 hours with breaks), and the other two playtesters (you know who you are!) who reported some glaring issues with E3S6 and E3S7A.1, which were addressed after the <b>Big Merge</b> and before the packaging of this release.</p>
<p>I will save the longer announcement (including plans for the future) for later, when the final Epilogue is done and 0.9.0 is released.</p>
<p>The changelog for this version follows:</p>
<pre>Version 0.8.90 a.k.a. "0.9.0 minus one":
----------------------------------------
* General:
* Dropped remaining compatibility code for Wesnoth 1.9.14 and earlier.
* Scenarios:
* E1S11.2 - Return to Wesmere, part 2:
* Removed compatibility code for Wesnoth 1.9.5 through 1.9.8.
* Completed Episode III (sans Epilogue).
* Units:
* Balancing:
* Increased Elynia's resistance to impact damage from -10% to 0%.
* Decreased Demon Shapeshifter's ranged attack from 8-2 to 7-2.
</pre>
Sat, 23 Feb 2013 05:10:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/264-guid.htmlAfter the Storm: Not so fasthttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/263-After-the-Storm-Not-so-fast.html
After the StormMiscellaneousPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothWesnoth-UMC-Devhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/263-After-the-Storm-Not-so-fast.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2630http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=263nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Everyone who follows me on Twitter can stop reading here.</p> <br /><a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/263-After-the-Storm-Not-so-fast.html#extended">Continue reading "After the Storm: Not so fast"</a>
Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:16:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/263-guid.htmlAfter the Storm: Big Merge done, 0.8.90 on the horizonhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/262-After-the-Storm-Big-Merge-done,-0.8.90-on-the-horizon.html
After the StormMiscellaneousPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothWesnoth-UMC-Devhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/262-After-the-Storm-Big-Merge-done,-0.8.90-on-the-horizon.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2620http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=262nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>The first <cite>After the Storm</cite> commit to Wesnoth-UMC-Dev’s trunk happened on May 17th, year 2008.</p>
<p>Today, February 19th 2013, after years and years of development, with various real life and non-real life issues getting in the way and dooming the campaign to Development Hell until <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/205-After-the-Storm-0.5.0.html">version 0.4.0</a> with a completed Episode I finally happened on October 16th 2011, I can say for certain that...</p>
<p><cite>After the Storm</cite> is finally complete.</p>
<p>With the <b>Big Merge</b> done and all the Episode III post-Divergence content (sans the Epilogue scenario) finally landed in Wesnoth-UMC-Dev trunk, the next step is releasing AtS version 0.8.90 to the public.</p>
<pre><samp>r17177 | AtS: bump version from 0.8.5+svn to 0.8.90-svn in the changelog after the Big Merge
r17176 | AtS: [Big Merge] workaround issues with the test suite and macros from data/core/units.cfg
r17175 | AtS E3: [Big Merge] land post-Divergence maps and scenarios
r17174 | AtS E3: [Big Merge] land post-Divergence ancillary macros, story text, character macros, and death handlers
r17173 | AtS: [Big Merge] land post-Divergence units WML, baseframes, halos, and animations
r17172 | AtS: [Big Merge] merge macros used for post-Convergence content
r17171 | AtS: [Big Merge] remove conditional loading of finale-stage scenarios and units
r17170 | AtS: bump version from 0.8.5+svn to 0.8.90-svn before the Big Merge
r17169 | AtS E3S6: enable scenario in regular gameplay
</samp></pre>
<p>There will be a delay between this and the actual <b>public</b> 0.8.90 release while my primary playtester (<a href="http://r.wesnoth.org/uvultraz">vultraz</a>) does the playtesting thing with the scenarios. Some balancing changes before 0.8.90 may also be necessary.</p>
<p>In the meantime, people can check out <cite>After the Storm</cite> from Wesnoth-UMC-Dev trunk using the Subversion client of their choice, and provide me with feedback via <a href="http://r.wesnoth.org/ushadowmaster">forum PM</a> (in particular, about any possible bugs or balance issues that might plague some specific scenarios), or private messaging on IRC — I am on <code>irc.freenode.net</code>, channel <code>##shadowm</code> most of the time, but I would rather avoid people dropping spoilers in the presence of my aforementioned playtester, who also hangs around there.</p>
<p><s><b>UPDATE:</b> Since I haven’t gotten around to publish version 0.2.0 of the <cite>AtS Music</cite> add-on, you will also need to obtain the latest version from SVN separately, since it introduces a few music tracks used in the new AtS Episode III scenarios. Of course, this is only necessary if you want/need to have in-game background music.</s></p>
<p><b>UPDATE 2:</b> <cite>AtS Music</cite> version 0.2.0 is now in the 1.10 and 1.11.x add-ons servers. The previous version was 12.3 MiB in size, whereas the new version is 22.7 MiB. I actually had to do some re-encoding to bring it down from 33.1 MiB, but there shouldn’t be any noticeable compression artifact build-up — or at least, I cannot perceive any with my headphones on.</p>
<pre>svn co https://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/After_the_Storm
svn co https://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/AtS_Music</pre>
<p>You can also grab tarballs of the latest trunk snapshots through SourceForge.net’s SVN web interface:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/After_the_Storm/">/trunk/After_the_Storm file listing</a> (tarball link at the bottom)</li>
<li><a href="http://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/AtS_Music/">/trunk/AtS_Music file listing</a> (tarball link at the bottom)</li>
</ul>
<p>This last alternative is probably not the best, though, since you will not be able to track future updates. Subversion makes it far easier to update every time a changeset is committed, without having to download the whole thing every time.</p>
<p>I am not going to provide any further instructions for installing using either of these methods, so I’m leaving this to people <strong>who actually know their way around Subversion tools or manually installing add-on content</strong>. I am not going to post any <strong>spoilers</strong> either; in particular, I am not going to reveal the Epilogue sequence until <strong>version 0.9.0</strong>.</p>
<p>Special thanks go to Espreon, Gambit, and vultraz for making all of this possible in their own ways. I will probably explain the deal with AtS’ troubled development in a new post in the near future (probably after 0.8.90 is properly published).</p>
<p>Thanks to all those who waited this long for this to happen. For those who are eager to playtest this and don’t know their way around the aforementioned things, I can only promise that the wait for 0.8.90 will be much shorter. A couple of weeks, tops.</p>
<p>Finally, the usual disclaimer applies: <em>this campaign is not for everyone</em>.</p>
Tue, 19 Feb 2013 04:48:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/262-guid.htmlLate After the Storm development roadmaphttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/261-Late-After-the-Storm-development-roadmap.html
After the StormInvasion from the UnknownPersonalProjectsSoftwareWesnothhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/261-Late-After-the-Storm-development-roadmap.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2610http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=261nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>It is February 16th already, and it has been a long while since my <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/236-After-the-Storm-0.8.1.html">last update on AtS’ development on this blog</a>, unless we count the <a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/258-Work-in-progress-screenshots-for-After-the-Storm-0.9.0.html">January 1st teaser</a>.</p>
<p>Well, here is another teaser in the form of a more concrete roadmap for AtS 0.9.0’s development:</p>
<br /><a href="http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/261-Late-After-the-Storm-development-roadmap.html#extended">Continue reading "Late After the Storm development roadmap"</a>
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:55:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/261-guid.htmlMy New Year resolutionhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/256-My-New-Year-resolution.html
HardwareMiscellaneousPersonalhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/256-My-New-Year-resolution.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2561http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=256nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<pre><samp>...
screen #0:
dimensions: 1920x1080 pixels (513x292 millimeters)
resolution: 95x94 dots per inch
...
</samp></pre>
<p>I regret nothing.</p>
<p><small>Note: the physical dimensions might be wrong, as usual. The above yields a diagonal of ∼590 mm, whereas the monitor’s specifications state it should be 584 mm, or 23″ (584.2 mm).</small></p>
Mon, 31 Dec 2012 03:13:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/256-guid.htmlUnbreakhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/257-Unbreak.html
IRCMiscellaneousPersonalSoftwareWesnothhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/257-Unbreak.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2570http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=257nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Back to regular business on IRC and Wesnoth for now.</p>
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:19:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/257-guid.htmlNot a nice touchhttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/254-Not-a-nice-touch.html
HardwarePersonalSoftwarehttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/254-Not-a-nice-touch.html#commentshttp://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/wfwcomment.php?cid=2540http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=254nospam@example.com (shadowm)
<p>Ever since I got my first laptop, I always wondered what kind of people are actually meant to use the ‘tap’ capability built into touchpads.</p>
<p>I remember being stumped at first when I would try to do normal things (on Windows) only to get continuously interrupted by some unexplained drag-and-drop action or accidental click. There was absolutely nothing anywhere evident explaining that ‘tapping’ was a thing I was expected to do, and in fact, was accidentally doing repeatedly. It took me some experimentation to get the gist of the interface and its configuration, and as soon as I understood it better I went and disabled it.</p>
<p>Later when switching (back) to Linux I would encounter the same issue and I’d have to check the X.org synaptics driver man page to figure out the necessary options to add to <code>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</code> to get rid of that questionable ‘feature’. Fortunately, nowadays I can just install the <code>kde-config-touchpad</code> package on Debian and configure everything according to my preferences through a more user-friendly mechanism.</p>
<p>Alas, just like the power button, that laptop’s touchpad buttons were not designed for daily use — thankfully KDE (like Windows) includes a feature to control the pointer with the keyboard.</p>
<p>What touch-based input lacks is intrinsic tactile <strong>feedback</strong>. Unlike button or key-presses, I cannot <em>feel</em> the action of tapping a touchpad any more than I can feel the action of casually or accidentally sticking my finger on it. A very small amount of pressure counts as a tap, whereas pressing a normal touchpad or mouse button requires a much larger amount, and with good reason; that pressure could be the difference between holding back an embarrassing post and inadvertently submitting it, or (when dragging gestures are enabled) ruining one’s system by dragging half of the Windows system files to the wrong place. Fortunately, most of my experiences in that regard have been of the “cannot drop a folder onto itself” kind.</p>
<p>There is also the issue that not everyone has the common sense to keep their hands clean at all times. Helping other laptop users can be a quite unpleasant experience without a mouse handy — <em>yuck</em>.</p>
<p>And then there are cell phones. Touchscreens are becoming irritatingly common (even in the low-end market) and they are even worse than touchpads in most respects. Sure, you can see what you are going to tap <em>right there</em>, but is that any help against “fat finger” mistakes? Scrolling gestures are a hit or miss action by design, and it is awfully easy to screw up the timing and have the device register it as a tap. These are your time and money in the balance here; you do <em>not</em> want to miss while navigating cell phone menus. And exactly how am I supposed to point other people at some element on the screen without activating it or giving up accuracy and pointing from afar?</p>
<p>In any case, I am pretty sure I do not want to be forced to use a touchscreen-driven phone to call an ambulance.</p>
<p>The obscene joke that is Windows 8 was clearly intended to push OEMs to produce more and more touchscreen-based garbage, as if we needed to merge phone and tablet user interface paradigms with desktop and laptop computers. I could rant some more about Windows 8, but that would take at least a dozen more paragraphs for a worthless tangent. The only thing that matters is that Microsoft will most certainly succeed regardless of the platform’s user experience merits (of which there are basically none compared to Windows 7), simply because of the OEMs and software vendors’ obligation to lick Microsoft’s smelly boots. I can see non-touch monitors becoming increasingly rarer in the future for this reason; I can see the pain for user interface toolkit developers and clients (users) in a few years when <em>everything</em> is required to support touch input — yes, even Wesnoth.</p>
<p>And in this case, mice are not an optimal alternative. I have tried the Windows 8 Release Preview on virtual machines with a mouse and I can safely say I find any other version from 3.0 through Windows 7 to be more efficient for daily use. I guess your mileage may vary after a while, though. Perhaps technologically-challenged kids and elders will learn to use the “modern desktop” faster and better than us veterans?</p>
<p>Not my business anyway — as long as the KDE crowd doesn’t fuck up, that is. Let us all hope Canonical doesn’t fuck up in a similar way too, because everyone likes to imitate Ubuntu nowadays.</p>
<p>My initial experience with computers was through MS-DOS and old-fashioned keyboards. I grew up using standard two-button mice in tandem with more old-fashioned keyboards, and later upgraded my experience with scrolling wheels, and wireless mice. Scrolling wheels are great for web browsing, coding, examining lengthy terminal output buffers, and even drawing, but the cheaper mice out there don’t really last very long, and lint and hair do not really help matters when the design doesn’t include a simple way to access and clean the wheel’s gear.</p>
<p>Wireless mice are apparently a love-it-or-hate-it subject. My current mouse has lasted over a year, it is large enough to work well as a laptop mouse <em>and</em> a desktop mouse, and the battery charge tends to last nearly a month. I bought a couple of rechargeable AA batteries with it and I always keep one fully charged for quick replacement; the mouse only uses one battery at a time. All of my previous mice used two AAA batteries, which lasted significantly less. Their scroll wheels were evidently not designed to last either.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure I will not be buying any touch-based devices for the foreseeable future. My new cell phone is more than enough to keep my patience below nominal levels for a while, at least when using it; I am grateful that the manufacturer was kind enough to include a physical numeric keypad along with two actual call and dismiss buttons.</p>
Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:12:00 +0000http://shadowm.ai0867.net/blog/archives/254-guid.html